October 12, 2005
Commission Junction’s Publisher Service Dis-Agreement
The new Commission Junction Publisher Service Agreement that was announced last week and goes into effect on October 20 has spurred quite a bit of lively (and not so lively, depending on where you are) discussion. Here’s collection of various places where the issue is mentioned and/or discussed. The different reactions in the different affiliate communities is interesting…
DigitalPoint has a thread on the subject. A flash of discussion, then I think the entire forum fell asleep reading the new agreement.
The Affiliates4uForum has picked up the story and are asking questions of Jonny Forester of Commission Junction UK who has checked in. They’ve all gone to bed, so we’ll see if he weighs in tomorrow.
ABestWeb, headquarters for the unofficial CJ-haters club, has several very lively threads on the subject, some general concern about the new PSA as well as several of it’s fine points. There are some affiliates threatening to pull all CJ links and others who cannot fathom what all the fuss is about. I’m certain about one thing: The collective effort spent on ABW picking apart the details of the new agreement dwarfs that which CJ spent on each respective point.
WebMasterWorld also has a discussion in it’s Advertising Sales and Affiliate Programs forum. Not much there either. A basic “deal with it” sort of response.
After watching these discussions progress and digress for the past several days, doing my own analysis of the PSA, and speaking directly with some folks at CJ, I have a few ideas about the new agreement and how it came to be. My feeling is that they felt they needed a new agreement with some changes to help enforce the crackdown on baddies. Some new lawyers (VCLK) rewrote an old (pre-VCLK) agreement and this is what came out.
The bottom line…while technically the agreement would allow it, there are surely no grand plans to obliterate the little guy, screw anyone out of hard-earned commissions, or go on a privacy policy witch-hunt.
CJ could have done a much better job documenting the changes and their intentions, but they’re not likely to change the agreement.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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Scott,
I’ve know referred to this 5 times for reference. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Beth